<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>What Are Friends For? by ConceptaDecency</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26914510">What Are Friends For?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConceptaDecency/pseuds/ConceptaDecency'>ConceptaDecency</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Go Climb a Rock [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: Deep Space Nine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Friends With Benefits, Friendship, Heavy Drinking, M/M, Only One Bed, Supportive Miles O'Brien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:42:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,471</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26914510</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConceptaDecency/pseuds/ConceptaDecency</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when you have reservations for a lovers' festival on Bajor but you've broken up with your Bajoran girlfriend? Take your favourite Cardassian lunch companion, of course. </p><p>And then tell your favourite drinking buddy all about it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Julian Bashir &amp; Miles O'Brien, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Go Climb a Rock [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2008252</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>205</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What Are Friends For?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You mean you never bothered to change the reservation?”</p><p>“No, I bothered. They were the ones who botched it.” Julian took a drunkenly dignified sip of his whiskey. </p><p>“So the hotel had Garak booked in under Leeta’s name?” Miles laughed and took a slug of his own whiskey. “What did he think of that?”</p><p>“He thought it was hilarious. Had me call him Leeta any time we were in a public area of the hotel.”</p><p>Miles laughed harder.</p><p>“Okay, that is pretty funny. Here’s to Garak for rolling with the punches.” </p><p>“To Garak!”</p><p>They clinked glasses and drank.</p><p>“Think it’s time for a top-up, Chief.” Julian peered into his glass, which had the audacity to be empty. </p><p>“Okay.” Miles attempted to pull himself up from where he was sprawled on the O’Brien family sofa, but his feet were far too comfortably propped on the armrest. “But you’ll have to get it.”</p><p>“Okay.” Julian easily uncurled himself from his position on the floor and loped to the liquor cabinet. “Which one? The Dum...no. Drumshanbo? Shambo? This?”</p><p>“That’ll do.”</p><p>Julian slopped each of their glasses full again and, after setting the bottle within easy reach on the coffee table, folded himself back onto the floor, legs pretzeled and side resting on the seat cushion that was also gently cradling Miles’ head.</p><p>“You should have seen him ‘roll with the punches’ when we got to the room.”</p><p>“Only one room?”</p><p>“Only one <em>bed</em>. And all the other rooms were full.” Julian shrugged. “Tona Lovers’ Festival. It’s very popular.”</p><p>“Hold on.” Miles narrowed an eye. “You mean to tell me you took Garak to a lovers’ festival? Thought ye went to Bajor to climb a mountain.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Julian sipped his drink, then realised that further explanation was perhaps warranted. “It’s a sort of annual pilgrimage up Mount Tona. You go with your lover or your wife or whatever and it’s supposed to give you insight as to the future of your relationship. Leeta and I booked it aaaaages ago.” He waved a hand. “Long before we decided to break up.”</p><p>“Julian. Why didn’t you let Leeta and Rom have the reservation, then?”</p><p>“Rom couldn’t. He had to go to Ferenginar for his mother’s birthday.”</p><p>“Oh yeah.” Miles had been the one to approve the leave and rearrange the work schedule. Funny what whiskey did to your memory. “So you took Garak. To a lovers’ festival.” He could barely get the words out for laughing. </p><p>“Well, yeah. I had the reservation and the leave already, and Garak said he was interested in climbing the mountain and could close the shop for a few days.” Julian joined Miles in laughing, though it wasn’t clear they were laughing at the same thing. “It worked out perfectly.”</p><p>“<em>Did</em> it. Julian, I hope you told that poor fool what he was getting into.”</p><p>“Whaddjamean?” Julian was squinting owlishly into the bottom of his rapidly-emptying glass. </p><p>“Did you tell him you were taking him to a lovers’ festival or not, you eejit?”</p><p>“Eh? Oh yeah, he knew. He’d heard of it before.” </p><p>“And he didn’t get any ideas?” It would be just like Julian to invite a friend as a fill-in to a lovers’ festival and neglect to tell him it was just as friends.</p><p>“Ideas? ‘Bout what? You go there, you climb the mountain, you go home. That’s about it.”</p><p>“Ideas that you might have asked him because you wanted to be more than friends.”</p><p>“Ohhhhhh. Right. Because it’s a lovers’ festival.” </p><p>“Exactly.”</p><p>“No, we talked about it before. He understood.”</p><p>“Grand.” </p><p>“We did have sex, though.” Julian held up one hand, fingers splayed, and then, carefully because it was clutching his whiskey tumbler, the other. “A few-six times.”</p><p>Miles choked on his liquor. Some went up his nose.</p><p>“Oh, is that what you meant when you said ideas? It was just friendly sex, Miles. You know, sex between friends.” </p><p>“Just sex between friends.”</p><p>“Yeah. You know the kind? Some friends, if you’re both single at the same time, you just sort of naturally have sex with them.”</p><p>“To be honest, Julian, whenever I ended up having sex with a friend it was always because one or both of us wanted to be more than single.” No, that didn’t sound right. “I mean, more than friends.”</p><p>“Oh. Well, it’s not that way with me and Garak. We talked about it first.”</p><p>“Grand.”</p><p>“It’s just, he’s single, I’m single, we were both kind of, you know...”</p><p>“Lonely?”</p><p>Julian shook his head.</p><p>“No. Horny.” </p><p>“So you were both horny when you had this conversation about how ye were just friends having friend sex?” Miles could hear the doubt in his voice. He couldn’t help it. The idiot was like a younger brother, and if he couldn’t see what was in front of his face it was up to his friends, wasn’t it? And not his ‘just friends’ friends.</p><p>“Well, yes. I know it sounds bad, when you put it like that. But we talked afterwards, too.” </p><p>“Ah, that’ll have cleared it up, so.” Sure. Miles was prepared to leave it, at least for now, but something struggled through the rusty murk of his whiskey brain and emerged. “Wait a minute, Julian. Did you just say you’d had sex with Garak six times? You don’t mean just on Bajor?” How long had this been going on?</p><p>“Yes, just on Bajor.” </p><p>“The trip to Bajor you got back from today?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“But you were only there one night! And you had a mountain to climb! Don’t tell me ye skipped out on that?”</p><p>“Oh no. We climbed it. A few of the times were on the mountain, actually. They have these little sort of huts up on the summit that you can rent by the hour. The Bajorans believe it’s good luck for a couple to have sex on the peak of Mount Tona.”</p><p>“But you say ye aren’t a couple.” </p><p>“Well, no. And we aren’t Bajoran, either. I don’t actually believe it brings luck, you know. And neither does Garak. We were just kind of-“</p><p>“I know, I know. Horny.”</p><p>“I was going to say cold, especially Garak. But yeah, also horny. Especially Garak.” Julian flung his head back on the sofa cushion. “He is <em>so</em> sexy, Miles, when he wants his way. He’s kind of got this bossy bottom daddy thing going on, and-“</p><p>“Julian, what did we say before about too much information?” </p><p>“Oh, sorry. But anyway, yeah, we, erm, made love on the mountain.”</p><p>“It’s okay. You can say ‘fuck’ like a fucking adult.”</p><p>“I fucked him on the mountain. And in the hotel. And-” </p><p>“I’m delighted for you,” said Miles, saluting with his glass. “Well done.” He added a sarcastic edge to his voice, but part of him was genuinely happy. He supposed. If Julian was. Nobody could deny, much as Leeta was a fantastic woman, that Garak was much more of an intellectual match for Julian. Not to mention much better equipped to pull Julian up on his social missteps. And more likely to keep his interest. </p><p>“Thanks!” Julian raised his near-empty glass and drained it. “But we really are just friends.”</p><p>“Grand.” Sure. “Are ye going to continue seeing each other now you’re back from Bajor?”</p><p>“We aren’t ‘seeing’ each other, Miles.” Julian had got his hands on the bottle of Drumshanbo. “Another? But yeah, he’s coming over to mine tomorrow night. Just dinner and a friendly fuck, nothing else.”</p><p>“Julian.” </p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>Miles lifted his arm over where his head was lying on the sofa seat and made his best guess as to the location of Julian’s head. He was delighted when his hand connected directly with Julian’s puffy bouf of hair.</p><p>“You know what you are?” He gave Julian’s head an affectionate squeeze.</p><p>“What?” </p><p>Miles was about to say ‘a man who’s going to be a Cardassian’s boyfriend by the time Keiko and the kids are back from Earth, if he isn’t already’, but it was too complicated a sentence for his whiskey-addled tongue. And Julian would find that out soon enough, in any case. </p><p>“<em>You’re</em> a friendly fuck, Julian. That’s what you are.” </p><p>It was Julian’s turn to snort whiskey through his nasal cavities.</p><p>“I am, am I?” he said through the laughter, once he was able.</p><p>“Yeah, you are,” said Miles. He was laughing too. Hard. His belly hurt. “The friendliest fucking fuck I ever met.” </p><p>“To friendly fucks,” said Julian, and Miles could only assume he’d raised his glass, because Miles was laughing so hard his eyes had watered up.</p><p>“To friendly fucks,” Miles said. “Long may they fucking fuck.” </p><p>“I’ll drink to that,” said Julian, but he couldn’t, because he was laughing so hard. </p><p>“So will fucking I,” said Miles. And it didn’t matter, in that moment, that he couldn’t either.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I realised I had never written a 'there was only one bed' fic. So I wrote one. Sort of. </p><p>Comments and kudos are appreciated like fine liquor. Or if drinking isn't your thing, like a good friend (of any stripe).</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>